Chicago White Sox: A grade for Leury Garcia’s 2020 season
Leury Garcia is seen as a valuable member of the 2020 Chicago White Sox.
The Chicago White Sox saw Leury Garcia as an important piece to their 2020 season. He was a great utility player in years prior so he deserved the opportunity. The White Sox received a player to be named later for Alex Rios in a trade with the Texas Rangers in 2013. Two days after the trade was made, the player to be named later became Leury Garcia. Since coming over to the White Sox, he has had many different roles but 2020 was a bit different for him.
Injuries caused Garcia to play in only 16 games this year. It was a tough year for him in many ways but he showed that he can still be a valuable player to them as long as he is on the roster. He isn’t going to move the needle for them or anything like that but he certainly is a fine bench player to have around making an impact as a depth player.
Garcia started the season as the second baseman. He was a part of the best White Sox starting lineup in years on Opening Day 2020. He was their second baseman to start the season but he didn’t have the best start. It was clear that he was just acting as the placeholder until they called up Nick Madrigal from the Taxi Squad. It makes sense but it was clear that Garcia is better suited to be a utility player. Madrigal was staying down to manipulate service time.
Garcia suffered an injury eventually anyway so he only got in 16 games. In those 16 games, he was a 0.7 WAR player which is actually not bad. He slashed .271/.317/.441 with an OPS of .758. He hit three home runs and had eight RBIs with six runs scored as well. It was a pretty good level of production, despite the small sample size.
2020 Grade: C
There is no reason to give him a grade any lower than a C because when he was in the lineup he was actually pretty good. The reason he isn’t getting a higher grade is that he was the third most valuable second baseman that the White Sox used in 2020. It also doesn’t help that he was hurt for a lot of the year as well.
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2021 outlook:
In 2021, Garcia is going to be looking to come off the bench and be an impactful player in that role. Madrigal is going to be the second baseman for most of the year and all of the outfield positions seem to be set. He is still going to be on the team and make an impact every now and again. Those are exactly the players that you need in your organization to have enough depth to make deep playoff runs year after year. Garcia is that guy for the White Sox right now.